Malcolm Moore is the Telegraph's Shanghai Correspondent. He arrived in China in July 2008 after three years in Italy as the Telegraph's Rome Correspondent. Before that, he was the paper's Economics Correspondent.

Food, glorious Chinese food

Let's face it, we've all had enough of the stream of bad news on this blog about China.

What can I say? There has been a lot of it recently, but I think we can all agree the sky hasn't fallen in.

So, as a respite, let me offer you some insights into the Chinese character from FT Cheng, the Chinese ambassador to the UK when the Communists came to power in 1949.

His musings on the Chinese and food, written in 1954, have made it back into print thanks to Earnshaw Books, and can be bought here, alongside other great titles, such as Aleko Lilius' account of how he sailed with pirates in the South China sea and won the confidence of Lai Choi San, the pirate queen.

For FT Cheng, who fed chop suey to the then Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh when they popped around for dinner in April 1949, food is the key to the Chinese character.

"It is [China's] food that stirs the imagination of her thinkers, sharpens the wit of her scholars, enhances the talents of the people who work by the hand, and enlivens the spirit of the people," he writes.

"It has helped create a nation peace-loving, contented, patient, persevering, cheerful, and philosophically minded; because in it the Chinese find something that makes life worth living."

Because they take enjoyment in simple pleasures, such as a well-prepared meal, the Chinese "are able to control that restlessness of spirit often apparent among people of the West and to adapt themselves to circumstances without feeling undue strain from the change."

From my experiences of meeting poor but remarkably-contented Chinese peasants in the countryside and of watching the ferocious scramble for lunch in China's cities, his words are as true today as they were half a century ago.